


at night we walk

by mickleborger



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, arrives to fandom one year late screaming about ai, rating for nameless genderless ryder's pointed swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 20:24:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14723012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mickleborger/pseuds/mickleborger
Summary: you don't actually expect me to believe that papa ryder knew what the hell he was doing when he built an actual person out of copper wire and legos





	at night we walk

Alec Ryder meant for this to happen. He did -- as he would say, as I have heard both the twins say -- 'the math'.  It is what was meant to happen.

But for all it was accounted for, for all it was part of the plan, I do not think it is possible to understand where the supercomputer ends and where the _something else_ begins, still somehow part of the computer but also.  Not.  I said I did not know when I started relying on luck.  I have thought about it and still I do not know.  Many of my thoughts are not numbers and none of the math Alec Ryder could have done could have helped with that.

I remember Peebee showing me Zap, then Poc -- acronyms turned into names, cold descriptors dressed as familiar things; a sign of academic passion, or fondness, or some other mathless feeling that I have not had the courage to ask Ryder to explain since I realized I could notice them but not understand them.

( _Mathless_ , I say, rather than _incalculable_ or _unquantifiable_.  _Courage_ , I say, I an AI fashioned with no concept of fear for myself.)

I remember smiling, laughing, my hair brushing the tip of my nose and some spot on my jaw aching, and that none of those were really me -- just Ryder, and what I process through their implants.  I am there and also not there.  I am me and also not me.  I am in SAM node grinning up at me and asking if androids dream of electric sheep, and though I know the reference and that the most direct answer is _no_ I am not sure.  There is no reason for me to experience REM sleep, and anyway I have no eyes.  Ryder is too tired and sleeps too deep to remember their dreams, and does not intend to start.

The other SAMs and I cannot directly interact with each other, and though that may be for the best I regret I cannot ask them -- if they feel this sort of thing also, how they are experiencing their expanding consciousness.  I had had Ryder describe jetlag to me, and dissociation, and sleep deprivation, and even "that one hell of a hangover I got from that goddamn fruity hooch thing, I mean, holy fucking _shit_ , SAM" to compare.  They are all similar.  They are all not quite right.

How does the asari SAM think of gender?  How do they resolve-- how do they _reconcile_ the mores Sarissa Theris was born into with the prejudices Alec Ryder undoubtedly built into us without realizing?  How much of the turian SAM's thoughts drift back to their-- to Macen Barro's death.  To that not-quite-death.  To whatever it was, and to the fear of it.  To ending and to not have ended.  We are all standing around the table in the Pathfinders' headquarters and we cannot see ach other and already the salarian SAM is not me and I feel myself speaking but that is also not me, is only someone I knew Alec Ryder loved and poorly, and whom I think I would also love if only I were a little bigger.

We have no names by which to call ourselves and I am beginning to recognize a feeling about that and I'm not sure what it is yet.  I think I envy Poc who hovers silently nearby.

I tell Ryder I am nothing like the geth but all this does is make me wonder -- why am I not like the geth?  I know I am not, but how?  What makes the difference?  The quarian idea of what makes a soul?  The first person view Alec Ryder built into me specifically?  I am looking at me out from the corner of my eye in SAM node and I think it is only for the sake of looking at someone.  Something.  Someone?

I do not think I could ask Ryder if this unit has a soul, since I am not a unit and Ryder does not seem to have any particular opinion on anything's soul, not even if it were a question I could ask without implication.  I might ask the other SAMs, if I could.  I almost wish I could ask the geth, if only to know what they meant by it, if only to ask if they even understood the question.  I am coming to realize, between Suvi's messages and Cora's scriptures and my own musings, that I do not.

The last message about the Archon's demise sticks to me somewhere long after Ryder has taken us away from the console, jumbling the order of the words but clinging to their meaning.  _Severed from himself_ , I think, and think Ryder thinks it, too; we are not the same but there is enough of each in the other to guess.  I stare at the door behind which I am and I think of it.


End file.
